


Like the Dawn

by rarmaster



Series: FtPverse [14]
Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Gen, also you don't have to read ftpverse to understand this i dont' think, cw for a single line of suicidal ideation and talk about abuse, not in large doses but, there's two replikus here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-10
Updated: 2018-02-10
Packaged: 2019-03-16 12:01:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13635888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rarmaster/pseuds/rarmaster
Summary: What you know is this:•	Your star-shard trip got botched completely•	You have landed in a parallel universe•	You are kneeling next to yourself (it’s definitely an alternate you, and not Real Thing)•	He is absolutely having a panic attack





	Like the Dawn

**Author's Note:**

> i went through the five stages of grief about repliku potentially being in kh3 this morning but here's what acceptance brought me to

“Shh, shh, it’s okay,” you say, not sure what else to do as you kneel down next to him. Your brain spins a mile a minute, and thankfully it’s got the computing power of a supercomputer so at least you can analyze the situation you were thrown into quickly enough.

What you know is this:

  * Your star-shard trip got botched completely
  * You have landed in a parallel universe
  * You are kneeling next to yourself (it’s definitely an alternate you, and not Real Thing)
  * He is absolutely having a panic attack



He convulses where he’s curled up on the ground, his breaths coming quick and strained to him, knees hugged to his chest. You think he’s crying. You can’t blame him.

“Ohhh, buddy,” you say, a fondness welling up in your chest, as well as a bit of an ache, because you’ve been there, oh you’ve been there. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” you tell him again. You want to reach out and rub a soothing circle against his back, but you also know that if you were him—and, you are—that you would probably break your own arm in half if you tried, so. You don’t. “Just breathe,” you tell him instead. “Breathe, buddy, it’s okay.”

Your words don’t seem to do much. He doesn’t improve, his breaths just come in a more jagged pattern. He’s probably trying to hold it in. Probably embarrassed.

Thankfully you don’t need to try and coax the reason for this panic attack out of him. The evidence piles up and points to only one logical conclusion. He’s curled up in a corner of a bedroom—his?—which he probably considers a “safe” spot. The pattern of bruises and burns on the skin you _can_ see is achingly familiar. And then there’s the faint smell of electricity coming from him…

 A run-in with Larxene. Will she ever stop haunting you?

“Here, listen,” you say, since he doesn’t seem to be improving and you aren’t sure you can make him go through any breathing exercises, or if they’ll actually work. Instead you sit yourself on the ground and start tapping out a familiar rhythm above your knee, a rhythm which Sora ingrained into you. “Two times two is…?” you ask.

He makes some kind of strangled noise. Even though his back is to you, since you’re sitting and he’s on the ground you can see the way his face scrunches up. Guess you can’t blame him.

“Come on, numbers have never hurt us,” you prod. You’d count with him instead—maybe it’d be more familiar—but the string of numbers brings uncomfortable things to _your_ mind even if it doesn’t for him, and multiplication tables you found to be infinitely better at distracting you anyway. You pat out the rhythm again and repeat: “Two times two is…?”

He wheezes, but after a second a strangled thing that is absolutely his voice right now forces out the sound: “F- four.”

You nod. “Good.” He probably doesn’t need the reassurance, but you give it to him anyway. Maybe he could use more positive encouragement in his life. Sure, you don’t know where in his life’s journey he is, but… Couldn’t hurt. “Two times three is?”

“Six.”

You keep at it for a while. By the fours’ table you have to swap to your other leg because tapping out the rhythm on the same spot of your skin was starting to hurt. His breathing starts to regulate at the sixes, but you go through the sevens before you stop, just in case.

“Wanna keep going?” you ask.

“I’m… I’m good,” he answers, slowly. He uncurls from himself, turns to look at you as he pushes himself upright. He’s glaring, but something about your face makes him turn his head to the side, squint a little bit. “Real Thing?” he asks, in a tone that simultaneously conveys _what the fuck are you doing_ and a note of confusion that implies he’s not actually sure he’s calling you the right thing.

You laugh, because, he’s not, though you can understand the mistake being made.

“No,” you tell him. “Not Real Thing. I’m you, from a parallel universe. ‘Nother replica of Real Thing.”

He squints harder.

“It’s a long story,” you laugh. “But uh,” you scramble for a second to think of the easiest way to put it, “multiverse theory is real and travel between universes is possible sometimes, when your star-shard is being a bitch.” You smile as you say it, though something like knowing beats in your chest, because you think- You think maybe your star-shard didn’t malfunction at all. You think maybe you were meant to be here. To help him.

He blinks at you. Doesn’t answer. His face relaxes a little bit, though.

You lean a little bit towards him—slowly, because you know anything else would set your heart _racing_ —and tilt your head to the side.

“You okay?” you ask him.

He quickly turns his head away and scrubs at his tears. “I’m fine,” he snaps.

Alright. You aren’t sure why you expected anything different. You take a slow breath and decide to let it be, because, if you were him you’d much rather forget about what just happened than talk about it. Especially to someone you don’t consider safe.

But… There is one question, you need to ask. Hopefully he didn’t do anything as stupid as you did, but then, he’s you, so:

“She’s not… She’s not going to come after you, is she?”

He recoils like the thought hadn’t even occurred to him. Horror creeps onto his face. “N- No?” he answers, but he doesn’t sound very certain. He’s started hyperventilating again. Good job, Riku. You sent your other self into another panic attack—

No, but it was _important,_ though. Because if she is going to come after him, then your next move would have to be very very different.

“Sorry,” you say, habitually, then clarify: “You didn’t like, you didn’t give her a _reason_ to, did you?” He’s shaking his head now, but you continue just in case: “Because, like, in my universe I did something really stupid and tried to get revenge on her and it went… kind of terribly. Don’t, uh, don’t make the same mistakes I did.” The last words of warning are an afterthought. But they’re important, you think, because the last thing you want is to give him ideas.

“No, no, I- I mean, I fought back, but that was just self-defense,” he says. “And it’s not like it- not like it lasted long before—”

He cuts off. You don’t have to ask why.

You would have stopped fighting back too. It was just easier.

“Okay, then, you’re probably fine,” you assure him. “Sorry for scaring you.”

“No, it’s… a smart thing to worry about, I guess,” he mumbles. He hugs himself tightly, and after a second he grimaces. He pulls his hand away from his arm and looks down at it in something between disgust and discomfort. You can’t see his fingers, but you can see the smudged blood on his skin through the tear of his long-sleeved shirt. The cut doesn’t look too bad, but still…

You hold your hands out toward him.

“Can I heal you?” you ask.

He looks up at you and blinks.

“Um,” he says.

“I mean if you know Curaga or something—” you really doubt he does “—then never mind. But if you don’t mind… I don’t even have to touch you, since it’s just magic,” you reassure him. You aren’t sure if he’s gotten over the touch-repulsed thing yet. You’ve only just started to. And after a run-in with Larxene, it’s probably not a smart idea regardless.

He blinks again.

“Uh, go ahead?” he says.

You send him a smile and then push your magic towards him. You’re still… kind of bad at curative magic, but you manage a Cura alright, and you can feel it flood through his veins and start patching up every cut and bruise and burn that’s on him. Thankfully he hasn’t sustained any more serious injuries—your inner Aerith voice scolds you for not checking before casting Cure, because if he had and you didn’t have the magic to do anything about it, it would have been real bad—and so he’s healed up in quick order.

He stares silently at you for a few moments after the magic dissipates, then coughs. “Uh, thanks,” he says.

“Uh, no problem,” you answer. This ended up being… more awkward than you’d wanted it to be.

He looks really stressed out, too, and you want to… comfort him, somehow. You don’t know how. You don’t think he’d appreciate it if you tried.

“You should probably… tell someone. About Larxene,” you say. He screws up his face and turns away from you, hugging himself again. “You should,” you press. “You have… friends, right?”

He sends you a skeptical look for a second before looking away again, shrugging. “I mean, like, Real Thing and Sora and everyone else,” he answers.

“You should tell them,” you say. When he shakes his head you add: “You don’t have to tell them _everything._ Just that she’s a threat that needs to be dealt with.”

He scrunches up his face and—is _that_ what you look like when someone’s telling you something you don’t like? He’s pouting! Do you pout!? You refuse to believe you _pout_.

“Come on, I understand if you don’t want to, but it’s _important_ ,” you press on. You aren’t sure how to convey that magnitude of that to him, aren’t sure you like the weight that sits in your chest with the realization he probably is pushing back against the idea because he hates having to ask others for help, doesn’t believe they’d give it to him. If this was your universe and it wouldn’t be super awkward—not to mention an incredibly bad idea—you’d promise to take care of Larxene yourself but. You aren’t that stupid.

“I just,” he begins. Then stops. Wets his lips. “I just don’t want them to- to think—” He breaks off, seeming to have trouble with the thought.

You don’t need him to finish it, though.

“You’re _not_ weak,” you tell him, and your voice shakes with it.

He looks at you, surprised for a moment. Then he laughs—a short, bitter sound—and rolls his eyes.

And that. _Hurts._ Frustration boils up in you white-hot, boils so thickly in your throat you almost choke on it. Having your insistence of this, this _important_ thing, dismissed offhand… It _hurts_. But it doesn’t hurt nearly as much as the realization he doesn’t believe you, can’t believe you; the dismissal doesn’t make your heart ache as much as the realization of your mirrored pasts, the lies that were probably thrown against him until he believed them, how _fucked up_ you were and he is by Larxene and everything, everything, everything else.

You wonder if this heartbreak is what Aerith felt, when she disputed you on similar things and you refused to budge on for ages and ages.

“You’re _not_ ,” you insist, burning, every inch of you. “It’s not weak to be scared. It’s not weak to need help. It’s not weak to be- to be _this_. To be _us_.” You don’t have words for the shattered mess of a boy you were, still kind of are. You don’t have words for the disaster Larxene and her abuse turned you into. It feels like an eternity since you felt the weight of that brokenness in your chest, but your heart breaks for the boy you once were, for the boy sitting in front of you. “Anyone- _anyone_ would become like us, if they went through what- what Larxene put us through. It’s not _weak_.”

He looks surprised, a little confused, but not at all like he believes you. You press a hand to your eyes and try not to cry.

Your mind spins rapidly for something else, for different words, because the thought of him not getting this breaks your heart in more ways than you can bear. You fumble for a way to explain how it’s not weak to cry, everyone does that. You fumble for a way to articulate that doing things on your own isn’t strength, but stupidity. You fumble for a way to convey to him that the fact he’s sitting here right now, the fact he survived, the fact that he didn’t shove his own blade through his gut when the weight of what he suffered was too much to bear anymore is _strength_. You want to impart on him every lesson you’ve learned in this past year of your life, but you can’t find a way to do it in one breath, and—

“You… said you’re from a parallel universe?” he asks, interrupting your thought.

You nod. “Yeah,” you say, and then your mind clicks into gear again, wanting to tell him that’s not important though and continue imparting Immense Wisdom upon him but.

But.

The voice of your older sister whispers in the back of your mind, reminds you that you did not heal overnight, and you certainly did not heal in five minutes. And then she whispers that maybe you aren’t the person he needs to hear this from, anyway. You planted the seed. All you can do from here is hope it takes, hope that one day he does believe you, but there is no way you can fix all his problems within the next five minutes.

You take a deep breath. Try to accept that.

He asks you another question.

“How’d it go? With Larxene?”

You blink at him. Lower your hand from your face and try and sit up straight—Aerith always teases you about slouching—as you look at him. He looks curious. Hopeful, maybe?

“Well, she’s dead,” you open with. At least you can give him the hope that eventually she won’t haunt him anymore.

“You said you went after her,” he presses.

“It… was a really stupid idea,” you clarify. You are positive you cannot stress that enough. “I thought I was strong enough to take her and I absolutely definitely was not. She… probably would have killed me if a few of my friends hadn’t rescued me.”

“Real Thing?” he asks, cocking his head to the side.

You shake yours. “Aerith,” you answer, and then hesitate. It was Vexen, in the end, who had actually killed Larxene, but… You don’t think opening that can of worms with a parallel version of yourself is a good idea. Nor is it a thing you want to do, at all, ever.

Your hesitation gives him the room to laugh, a surprised note, and ask: “ _Aerith?_ ” like you couldn’t have possibly said anything stranger.

You nod, a smile breaking on your lips at the thought of your older sister. Your… oldest sister, since Yuffie is also older than you. (You love her just as much, though.)

“You know her?”

“A little bit,” he says, with a shrug.

“It’s… a long story,” you say slowly. You can’t stop smiling. “You wanna hear it?”

“Got nothing better to do,” is his answer, which you laugh at. You hope no one’s gonna worry about him if you keep him here a while longer. You then hope he _has_ someone to worry about him.

(Sora would, though. Sora has to. That’s a universal constant.)

“Well,” you say, and you tell him. Not everything. But a lot of it. How the universe you live in isn’t the universe you were born in. About Sora, and Kairi, and then about Namine. You leave out the Rebellion. You leave out the horrible things Namine went through. And you definitely don’t mention Sora’s Shadow, because that’s not your story to tell.

And you tell him about Aerith. Of course you tell him about Aerith.

You tell him how she came to you at a really, _really_ low point in your life, and how she loved you loud enough for it to break through the shell of defenses that had grown around your brain. You tell him about the comforts of her house, about the rest of your family. You tell him how much you love them. How good it feels to be loved.

By the end of it you’re grinning like a sap and tearing up a little. He’s considering you with a confused smile, like it’s a nice thing to hear but not an easy thing to believe.

“You serious?” he asks, when you finish.

Of course he asks.

(You asked the same, when Aerith first told you that yes, yes this was a thing you could have. It had taken you even longer to believe it was a thing that was really happening to you.)

“Yeah,” you tell him, smiling wide still.

You wish you could show him, but travel between universes is unreliable at best. (You don’t doubt your own ability to get home, but you do doubt your ability to get him back to his.) You hope at least he’s comforted by the knowledge that it’s possible for you, one of version of the multiple yous in the multiverse, to get a happy ending. You hope he isn’t jealous. You hope he finds his.

“What about you?” you ask of him.

His smile falters. After a moment he shrugs. “I mean… Real Thing found me, and ever since I’ve been here with him and Sora and their friends. Kinda helping them with the whole Xehanort business.” He doesn’t sound very excited about that. But he doesn’t sound like he _hates_ it, so, there’s that?

“Well, that’s good,” you say.

He just shrugs again. “Nothing like you got.”

“Maybe someday,” you tell him.

He laughs like he doesn’t believe it. You do your best not to fault him for that.

“I mean, if things here between you and Real Thing are like, _really_ awkward,” you say, “you could try Aerith? That might be a little awkward too, at least at first, but… I think it’s probably an option. If you wanted.”

You aren’t sure how it’d play out in a universe where there is absolutely still a Real Thing, a universe where she knew Sora before she knew you, but… You think your older sister’s kindness is a universal constant. You think her desire to help broken souls probably is, too. You fit in there once. Maybe you could again.

The you sitting across from you laughs.

“Think I’m over being a copycat,” he says.

You let him have that. “Just saying it’s an option,” you say. He laughs and shakes his head again, like it’s a good joke.

You hesitate a moment, then reach out and put a hand on his knee, squeezing it gently. He looks up at you, startled. Your eyes meet—and that’s a crazy, vertigo feeling. He’s younger than you, somehow. There are deep bags under his eyes, and his hair is longer. You hold his gaze. You speak quietly, and hope that the conviction in your tone means something to him.

“I mean it,” you tell him, tapping into a well of determination and love in your chest. “One day, you’ll get a happy ending. Because you deserve it. We both do. We all do. Someday,” you tell him, and you nod. “Someday.”

And then you let go of him, and you get to your feet, digging for your star-shard. He gets to his feet as well.

“I should go,” you say. Your fingers wrap around the star-shard. “But… maybe I’ll be back?” You can certainly try.

He stares at you, a long, level look. He’s silent for a long moment, looking as if he’s trying to grasp onto something fleeting and weighty in equal measure. But then he opens his mouth, and he says:

“You better be. Or else I won’t get to brag about my happy ending.”

You couldn’t have possibly grinned any wider.


End file.
